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Do’s and Don’ts Tips for an Effective Presentation

Good presentation skills are vital to your success at work, both individual success and the company success. With poor presentation skills you cannot inspire and retain your employees, sell your products, attract the funding you need for your new venture, nor evolve in your career.

Improve your presentation skills with the following tips:

DO’S

Know your audience.

Make an outline of what you will present with 3 or 4 main points.

Familiarize yourself with the location and equipment before presenting.

Use simple sentences.

Use examples to illustrate your ideas.

Practice your presentation.

Breathe deeply, relax and smile at your audience before presenting.

Use body language to reflect the content of the presentation.

Make eye contact at random with audience.

Talk to audience, don’t talk about them.

Give the audience chances to join in your presentation.

Use humor, when appropriate.

DON’T’S

Use too much jargon or specialized words/expressions.

Turn your back to the audience.

Have no eye contact during your presentation or fix your eye contact on one person.

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The material in this work is copyrighted. Copying and/or transmitting portions or all of this work without permission may be a violation of applicable law. IFC does not guarantee the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the content included in this work, or for the conclusions or judgments described herein, and accepts no responsibility or liability for any omissions or errors (including, without limitation, typographical errors and technical errors) in the content whatsoever or for reliance thereon.